The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge - Silver Age Archive

[jcricky]

Henan Jianye FC – 2023

 

This didn’t take long, I left Indonesia on the 27^thApril 2023 and 5 weeks later I was appointed the Henan Jianye FC manager. A club that found themselves in the relegation zone, but with a healthy bank balance and budget. It may have seemed like a risk with them being in the relegation zone, but I took the job at the start of the summer transfer window, giving me around a month to make changes to my squad before the league started again. Getting used to the foreign player limits was my first goal, something when you’re used to managing in England you don’t really need to bother with. 

Ronald Araújo and Stanislav Lobotka are the only players that were worthy of being foreign contingents, Baba, Rabuñal, Rashid, Skoric and Colin all departed. This allowed me to do my own business, Naby Keita and Paredes both joined on free transfers, both arguably in their prime at the ages of 28 and 29 respectively. Keanu Conway originally came in to be my starting striker and actually played one game before I agreed a deal to sign the Korean, Jung Yong-Ho. Once Yung-Ho was signed Conway was removed from the squad due to registration rules, he’s just chilling in the reserves currently with Serge Kitoko. Dai Wai Tsun came in as an extra player from Hong Kong (China PR) as I needed a right winger and all the Chinese options were terrible or wanted ridiculous fees. On the same note, signing players from other Chinese teams appears to be a massively inflated market and so I looked in the national team for players playing abroad. Centre back Shi Cong came in from Ulsan, he’ll partner Araújo at the back.

 

We were already out of the cup when I joined so survival was all I needed to focus on. In my first 10 we only lost one, however we only won 3, drawing the remaining 6. In the run in we were able to win 4 of the remaining 7, losing the other 3. This meant we finished 11^th, and actually 7 points clear of survival. One thing I did notice that any other season the two sides that were relegated would’ve stayed up quite comfortably, which suggests the gap in quality isn’t actually that great in this league. Despite only playing 8 games in the champions league for Suwon, Yong-Ho managed to win MVP and top scorer, which looks like good signs for the future.

 

Top Scorer – Jung Yong-Ho (10)

Most Assists – Leandro Paredes (9)

Highest Average Rating - Leandro Paredes (7.61)

Challenge Progress

Club

1/10 top domestic leagues (Badak Lampung, IDN)

1/10 domestic cups (Badak Lampung, IDN)

0/5 club continental championships

0/1 club world championship

International

0/5 continental tournaments ()

0/1 world tournaments ()

[_JHTB_]

Season 5: Waves, Record Breaking and Short Lived

The summer window saw us cut the wage bill whilst adding a lot more depth to the squad as we looked towards having a positive campaign. 

Waves

We got off to a great start finding ourselves top after a few games and we were playing pretty well and I felt like we were onto a good thing. Unfortunately, it was not plain sailing, every loss seeming to lead to several more losses, 4 losses out of 5 games in October, 4 losses out of our first 5 games in December but between those runs we had some good form winning multiple on the bounce. It was a pretty frustrating time and there was points where I did wonder whether I was going to get the sack.

Record Breaking

After our losses in December I finally decided it was time to change up the system and decided to adopt a similar tactic that gave us relative success with Haiti a 4-2-4, the downside was that the reason we were playing the formation we were was because we had a few defensive midfielders and indeed that was an area we had strengthened in the summer. What a good decision it was, the first game using it we won 3-0 with a draw in the second. From there in the league we were immense we won 16 games in a row in the league beating the previous record for consecutive victories which was 14. We did get smashed in the FA Cup 3-0 however which was a disappointment but a distant memory by the end of the season. While at TPS I had a good start with a strong winning run but this felt better considering how inconsistent we were in the first part of the season to go and win 16 games in a row is ridiculous, I couldn’t believe how long the run went on for. We did still have time to try and throw away the league title and promotion, but alas, we won our final game, the second city derby of all games to secure the title and to prevent Aston Villa getting automatic promotion.

Whilst the whole team performed wonders in the second half of the season Obinna Obereke was for me the catalyst in our rise up the table, he was one of my signings in last January and developed very well this season in fact the final 20 games of the season that he played he had an average rating of 7.91, ridiculously good.

Short Lived

I took the role of Nigeria Under 23s manager for the Under 23 African cup of nations and well the less said the better, the team just didn’t gel and despite probably having the better of all three games we ended up third with a 1-1-1 record and I was relieved of my duties less than a month since taking the role.

Second Half of the season Form

Obinna Okereke

Next Season

Consolidation in the Premier League has got to be the aim for next season, I’m pretty happy with the core of the squad so won’t be signing a lot of new players. Obviously I’d love us to pick up where we left off in the second half of this season but that isn’t realistic. I may decide to move on if the right job becomes available, but I don’t really need to if I can have a strong showing with Birmingham to improve my reputation then all is well in the long run.

The main area needed for improvement going into the new season would probably actually be striker. Birmingham did have a few good prospects in the youth teams with one of those actually my starting striker but him and his strike partner have a combined 20 finishing which isn’t the greatest.

The story so far

Overall Progress

Edited May 23, 2020 by _JHTB_

[treva]

Season 2024 Update

 

 

Having conquered both the league and cup competition in Indonesia there was little to be gained in terms of the challenge this season. However, our league win had secured us a place in the AFC Champions League group stages and I wanted to see how we could match up to the big boys. Turns out, not very well. We drew probably the hardest group possible. Jeonbuk of Korea, Kashima Antlers of Japan and Shandong of China have won three AFC Champions Leagues between them and reached five finals. We managed just one point, a draw in the final game against an already qualified Jeonbuk, who would go on to beat Shandong in the semi final and lose the final on away goals.

 

With that done with we looked to win the Piala Super Indonesia, a competition that would suggest was league vs cup winner but considering we played Arema, who won neither, I have no idea. We lost. Having lost to Arema in the Super Cup when manager of Mitra Kukar, it seems this trophy will forever allude me.

 

The season started horrifically, losing to Persib, the only team to beat us in the league last season, on the very first day. We then recovered to go 30 games unbeaten across all competitions and put ourselves firmly in charge of the title race, albeit a little tighter than before with both Persib and Arema doing the chasing. Back-to-back losses in October/November gave the chasing back hope, whilst back-to-back losses in December followed by a loss in the Piala Indonesia Final first leg looked like we might be about to choke. However, we bounced back to win our final two matches and came from 3-1 down to win the second leg of the Piala Indonesia final 3-0 to secure a majestic double.

 

 

Whilst not quite as convincing as last season, mainly due to the cup run and our season starting in mid-February, we still secured the record for most goals in a single season, breaking the one we had set last year. We had 9 of the 11 players in the Liga 1 Team of the Year but for some reason I missed out on a third straight Manager of the Year title to the Arema boss (they finished 3rd, outside of the Champions League places - figure that one out). Andres Cortabarria, my star Colombian striker who was signed from Belize in 2022 was incredible. He broke Haarlem's record for goals scored with 28 and broke the record for highest average rating in a single Liga 1 season with 7.73. I will miss him and his Colombian partner at AMC, Ronaldo Vergara, greatly. Our best signing this season was on a free in midfield, Indonesian international Eko Azmi, who narrowly missed out on Young Player of the Year. Korean Kim Jun-Boem who joined in August added real class in our midfield, whilst Gavin Kwan Adsit who joined at right back took the place of PSS legend Arthur Irawan.

 

 

 

 

On the international front, after victory against Bahrain and a disappointing to defeat to Syria with Hong Kong, the Croatia job opened up and rather surprisingly they wanted me. Having won Euro 2020, Croatia had fallen from grace somewhat, failing to qualify for the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024. They had, however, made the final of the UEFA Nations League. I joined in February and soon realised that Croatia's great players had all moved on and none of the new crop came close. After draws to Wales and Mexico in friendlies, we tackled world number one France, as well as Turkey and Sweden, in our Nations League group. We were woeful, picking up just 4 points and earning ourselves relegation to the B Tier. There is much work to be done as we prepare for World Cup qualifying against Turkey (again), Czech Republic, Montenegro and Azerbaijan.

 

 

It's time for me to say goodbye to PSS and head for new challenges. I'm hoping for a job in Korea or China to really have a go at the AFC Champions League but we'll weigh up the options with the second half of the European season still to come.

 

 

Challenge Progress

Club

1/10 Top Domestic Leagues: Indonesian Liga 1 (x2)

1/10 Domestic Cups: Piala Indonesia (x2)

0/5 Club Continental Championships:

0/1 Club World Championship:

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments:

0/1 World Tournaments:

Edited May 24, 2020 by treva

[_JHTB_]

Season 6: Solid Start and Disappointment

At the end of last season I had said that I wasn’t going to make a lot of signings as the core of the squad was alright, but I did actually make a decent number of signings largely adding depth in key areas whilst strengthening in others.

Solid Start

We kicked off our campaign with probably the worst possible fixture a trip to Old Trafford where we actually went 1 up in the first minute, ultimately it was a false dawn as they comprehensively beat us 5-1. Following that in or first home game though we won convincingly before rescuing a draw from 2 down in our next game. Another two wins one in league and cup saw us to the international break where I had a job interview for Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao and a job offer which I took.

Disappointment

One of the main things that drew me to Guangzhou was that they were 2^nd in their league with not many games to go so were on track for continental qualification for next season. The team were only 4 points off top also with 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 14^th and 15^th all to play in 6 of our last 7 games, so very favourable run in. Our tenure started with aplomb a 6-1 victory with two players getting hattricks. Another win followed and the 3^rd game we raced to a 2 goal lead. This is where the season turned, at 2 up we’d actually got to top spot, unfortunately we threw away the lead with them scoring in 90+5 with only 4 minutes added on to equalise, that sent us spiralling with back to back losses. A win in the penultimate game meant we were still in the running for our last game but we lost that 3-0 not only to not win the league but to finish 4^th and not qualify for the Asian Champions League due to the Cup winners not being in the top 4 themselves. Even on teams I’ve just taken over I still manage to have horrendous end of season form.

Summer Transfers

Next Season

The original plan for next season was to try and get a Champions League ticked off, but now it’s a get a league title ticked off and build towards a Champions League campaign the following season, we could also get a cup victory.

I think I need to improve the Chinese contingent in the squad and it’s likely a lot of the considerable transfer budget (£215 million) will be spent overpaying for the better Chinese players.

The story so far

Overall Progress

Edited May 24, 2020 by _JHTB_

[Britrock]

Santos FC - 2037 end of season review

This was a season that started slowly, then built as we went on a fantastic run and almost ended in fantastic success but at the end we fell annoyingly short in a couple of competitions.

In the Sao Paulo State Championship we strolled through everyone we came up against, until we ran into Sao Paulo in the final who hammered us 8-1 over the two legs. So close to a great start but so far.

In the Copa Perdigao do Brasil we had a slow start, losing our first game to Fluminese, but after that we won every game and got our revenge on Sao Paulo by beating them 4-0 over the two legged final to win my 17th trophy in the challenge.

In the Copa Sudamericana we made it to the final but then lost to Cruzeiro for the only time in 5 meetings this season. This was in the middle of a 3 game run the cost us this competition but also the league title.

In the league we lost out to Palmeiras by one point. We had it in the bag with 4 games to go but then lost to the 12th and 6th placed teams in games that we just didn't turn up for. The start of the season really cost us, I was trying to make 4312 and 4222 work, and while they were strong defensively they were pathetic going forwards (especially 4222) so we ended up drawing way too many games we should have won. Eventually I went back to the 4231 that worked so well at Orlando and we picked up our form from that point onwards.

Hopefully next season we can build on the league campaign and get off to a better start that means we get the title sorted. We're also in the Libertadores thanks to the cup win and league position so if I can get both of them I can move on from Brazil and start on my European adventure. There are so many games in Brazil I'll be glad to see the back of it - I've managed Santos in 73 games this season!

[vikeologist]

Vikeologist's Everton (and France) 2026/27 Report

We won the league, and since I have plenty of English cups, I could leave for a new nation.

However, it’s not that simple. The Club World Championship is in 2 years time, and I must make sure that I’m in charge of a club at that time that can not only qualify, but win it. Really I need to ensure that winning is as close to 100% certainty as possible, and if I stay at Everton for 2 more seasons, that should be the case. My team is young and will improve, plus I now have a lot of money to bring in new players. I spent pretty much my entire transfer fund a year ago to bring in a new central defender for £85 million, though I think it was worth it.

There is also the fact that I still haven’t won the Champions League. We reached the semi finals this season where we were perhaps unfortunate to go out on away goals after two draws.

If I stay another 2 seasons, I think I can make Everton practically unbeatable. Apart from my goalkeeper, who is 30, the rest of my first team are all under 30, and most of them are under 25.

The tricky thing is that if a suitable job comes up, I will probably need to quit, as  even the biggest clubs may not want to pay my contract up, which still has 3 years to run. I didn’t realise that I’d signed such a long contract. So, I’d have to quit, and then hope I get the job I apply for, which is hardly a certainty.

Also, we’ve only been in Europe for 3 seasons, and if we flukily go out early one of the next 2 seasons, we may not qualify for the Champions League.

Academic unless a job comes up at Paris SG, Barcelona or Real Madrid. All the other top teams in Europe are English.

 

We started the season badly. I decided to change my tactics to those that had been so much more successful with Uruguay. Not my best idea. They did not work for Everton, and they did not work for my new nation, France.

We lost 3 of our first 6 league matches. We lost zero of our remaining 32 after changing back.

The season took ages to play because the title race was so close, and I didn’t trust my Assistant manager enough to instant result anything. We didn’t clinch the league until just before our last match of the season.

We won the FA Cup. We reached the League Cup final, but failed to win it for the fourth time in a row, even though our opponents had a man sent off.

Top Goalscorer – Moise Kean – 47

Kean has been with us since I took over, but was never that highly rated, even though he did tend to get quite a few goals when given the chance.

By selling my 2 starting strikers a year ago, neither of whom had scored more than 30 goals in a season, I was all in on Kean and my Scottish wonderkid Dylan Munro. Munro is supposed to be by far the better player, but he’s never scored a lot. 25 this season. He did however get 15 assists compared to Kean’s 4, so they’re a pretty good partnership.

 

Highest Average Rating (minimum 10 matches played) – Moise Kean – 7.62

Man of The Match – Moise Kean  - 13

 

Most Valuable Player– Moise Kean

 

I still think it’s Christopher McKay, but I can’t really argue with the stats, or indeed the goals.

As I mentioned, I took over France after last summer’s World Cup. They’re ranked 1 in the world, but it hasn’t been an unmitigated success so far. We finished behind England in our Nations League group, thanks to my Uruguay tactics) and contrived to lose our Euro Championship qualifier to Czechia. We should still qualify, but anything less than winning the Euro and World Cup will be failure.  

Domestic
Season	Team		Division		Position	MVP				Notes										
20/21	Folkestone	England VNL South	4th		Alfie Matthews 	(SC) 		Lost in playoff S/F
21/22	Folkestone	England VNL South	1st		Jobi McAnuff	(MR)		FA Cup R4, won league by a country mile.
22/23	Folkestone	England VNL Conference	1st		Dion Rankine	(MR)		FA Cup R4 again, back to back promotions to the Football League
23/24	Folkestone	England League 2	4th and lost in playoff final without me 	Left after 21 matches with Folkestone in 2nd and on course for 3rd promotion in a row.
23/24	Everton		Premier League		11th		Alexander Nübel	(GK)		Took over after 16 matches. Won Carabao Cup.
24/25	Everton		Premier League		7th		Christopher McKay (MR)		Won Carabao Cup (again) and Europa League, thus qualifying for Champions League.
25/26	Everton		Premier League		3rd		Christopher McKay (MR)		Carabao Cup Threepeat, Lost in CL Final.
26/27	Everton		Premier League		1st		Moise Kean (SC)			League / FA Cup Double.					

International
Year		Team				Achievements
23	Indonesia U23			Topped U23 Asian Nations Cup Qualifying.Quit shortly afterwards.
24-26	Uruguay				World Cup S/F
26-	France



Challenge Progress 2/32

Club
 1/10 top domestic leagues 		(England)			
 1/10 domestic cups 			(England)						
 0/5 club continental championships	 	
 0/1 club world championship

International
 0/5 continental tournaments 		
 0/2 world tournaments 			

 

[_JHTB_]

Season 7: Steamroll, Discipline, Breaking Traditions and Coin Toss

This summer the main aim for the transfer window was to try and secure the better Chinese players, but I also decided to refresh the foreign contingent at the team as we had a few players who were aging in that regard. We broke the record transfer for Chinese players twice, the second one costing us £37.5 million. We also made sure to secure the best player from Hong Kong as it helped with player limits.

Steamroll

Following the transfer window I was in no doubt that anything other than winning the league this season would have been an underachievement, we had players in all areas of the pitch of decent quality and players who could replace the foreign players without weakening us tremendously (still a little obviously but not as much as it was previously) which added more flexibility. For the most part the league went off with not much trouble, though we did lose a couple of away games early on. That did lead me to make a little tweak to our away style of play which worked out well. Going into the summer break we were comfortably top and in the cup quarter finals.

Discipline

It wasn’t until I got an inbox message asking me to register my squad that I’d realised we were actually in the Club World Championships this season so it was a bonus in that front though I wasn’t expecting much. We drew Al-Ahly of Egypt and Arsenal in our group. Our first game we won 8-0 against Al-Ahly before we faced Arsenal, and we were comfortably up for most of the game before they got an own goal and a quick second which would likely see us out, thankfully a 90+3 equaliser meant Arsenal had to better our victory over Al-Ahly to send us out. They also won 8-0, but we went through due to having less yellow cards where we were to face Real Madrid.

In the Real Madrid game we probably had the better chances throughout the game but neither team could find a breakthrough so it went all the way through to penalties which we won to set up a semi-final against Manchester United. Again, we arguably had the better chances in the game but their quality showed and they got a 2-0 victory. The third placed playoff was against Barcelona who smashed us 4-0 in the fashion that I had expected all our previous games to go except the Al-Ahly game.

Breaking Tradition

The Club World Championship was welcome in more ways than one as it allowed us to keep our match sharpness up whilst aiming towards a trophy and a week after the 3^rd placed playoff we managed to secure passage to the Cup Semi-Final. The first half of August was not a good time for us, it started in defeat to second in the before we got smashed 5-1 by the team in 9^th, the low point of the season. We also lost our first home game of the season after having a 10-0-0 record up until then. Thankfully we picked back up and qualified for the cup final and picked up some key wins. In pretty much all of my seasons so far we seem to have some poor end of season form which risks undoing the hard work for the season but 6 wins in a row clinched us the title with two games to spare (We didn’t continue our winning streak for the last two but went undefeated).

The cup final was a little way after the last game of the league so we had chance for key players to return from injury, the first leg was away and whilst we did get pegged back from 2-0 we ultimately ended up winning the game 3-2. The second leg was more back and forth ending in a 3-3 draw and seeing us win the Cup 6-5 on aggregate, another trophy ticked off this season.

Coin Toss

I decided to try for an International job again this season and applied for both the Qatar and Australia jobs at the same time each in with a shot at qualifying for the world cup playoff if they could beat the other team. Qatar were the ones to offer me the job first so I took it and took on Australia over two legs in my first two matches in charge. It became quickly apparent that I probably should have waited to see if Australia would offer me the job instead as they raced to a 2 goal lead in the first half of the away game. We did fare better in the second half but lost 3-1 in the end giving us a two goal deficit to overturn. The second leg we went a bit experimental with the tactics and like Australia in the first game we went 2-0 up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t plan for a 30 yard screamer and 2-1 it finished, no World Cup for Qatar any time soon and it looks like I picked the wrong team.

What £37.5 Million buys…

 

Next Season

The aim for next season is to Challenge for the Asian Champions League, I feel we’ve probably a decent chance of winning and it would be nice to tick it off this quick. If we do get knocked out of the Champions League early doors I may look to move on and circle back to Asia at a later date.

 In terms of transfers I don’t think I need to go as big as last season (£176 million) but will probably try and bring in some more good Chinese players to try and ensure the team is strong even with our foreign players unavailable. We have already secured the signing of one of the best goalkeepers in the league on a free which is a great start.

With Qatar there is the Asian cup coming at the end of the next season so hopefully we’ll be able to put in a strong showing there. Qatar did come runners up in the 2023 edition so there’s some hope we may be able to compete.

The story so far

Overall Progress

Edited May 26, 2020 by _JHTB_

[treva]

Anyone seen anything quite like this before?   The first 9 goals were all scored by different players as well.

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by treva

[XuluBak]

On 26/05/2020 at 13:23, treva said:

Anyone seen anything quite like this before?   The first 9 goals were all scored by different players as well.

 

I don't think I've ever seen four sent off, but 13-0 is nothing for some of the more lopsided international matchups. I've seen multiple 20+ to 0 scorelines. 

[_JHTB_]

Season 8: Shaky, Horrific Scheduling, … and Experimentation

I went into the off season knowing we probably shouldn’t have to bring in any players to be able to retain our title, in spite of that I brought in two of the best goalkeepers in the league and two of the best Chinese defenders in as well. With those additions I was confident that we would be able to walk the league, we had by far the greatest strength in depth.

Shaky

The season started with the first two games of our Champions League group which we won, the former probably less convincingly than I’d originally hoped but 6 points on the board. Following that we had the Super Cup which I decided to try and see how we’d fair fielding and entirely Chinese XI. We were unconvincing in a 1-0 loss. The start of the league season did not go as planned, 3 losses from out first 5 matches is nowhere near the form that this team should have been showing and needed to turn around quick before I found my job in jeopardy. There was a common theme with the losses, all of them were away from home so back to similar issues faced at the start of last season and yet more tactical tweaks to rectify the poor form actually utilising a new formation for some fixtures.

Horrific Scheduling

After adding in a new tactic we did start to play a lot more consistently and our form saw us rise up to the top of the table whilst also getting to the Cup quarter final and through to the Champions League knockout stage where we would face Beijing Sinobo Guo’an, a team that had already beat us twice this season. The first leg saw them take a 2-0 lead before our centre back inexplicably got himself sent off. Remarkably we fought back to draw the tie 2-2, but there was an issue on the horizon. The second leg was to take place just a week later but we had no less than 14 first team players unavailable as they were on international duty for the upcoming World Cup which meant we had a total of 16 players to choose from for the second leg and one of those was a Midfielder who has to play with injections at before he’s out for 4 months, who thought this was a good idea? We were without all of our centre backs so were playing two midfielders their and somehow managed to prevent them from scoring before snatching an unlikely winner late on.

…

After the last segment we had the summer break so had time to relax a bit after that scheduling issue, our first game back was actually a loss. We were knocked out of the cup but other than that we maintained strong league form a strong run of winning games except the one in which we drew finding ourselves 10 points clear with 10 to go. It happened again… 10 first team players on International duty for the U23 Asian games, this time with both league games and the Champions League to navigate, I don’t have the words. The silver lining was that were only without 8 of our players rather than the 14 we were missing at the world cup and that for league games we had more foreign options but, I have developed a strong dislike for the Asian football calendar. Mentally, our first game with players unavailable was my largest win of the save so far 11-0 away against bottom of the league, so there’s that. But, we then lost our flawless home record the game before the Champions League quarter final first leg.

Thankfully in the registration window I’d registered another centre back or we’d be going into our game with just the one again though he was making his debut, we lost the game 3-1 which was probably a fair result in terms of the game but I’m certain we’d have won were our players available. Before the second leg China under 23s had all their group games to play where I was cheering their opponents with the hope we’d have our team back for the second leg. They went out and we had an actual chance of overturning our first leg defeat. We battered them in the second leg, but only managed one goal so out of the Champions League we go. I resigned, even though I’m pretty positive we’d have won the Champions League next season, we should have won the Champions League this season and but for stupid international scheduling I’m in no doubt we would have. Resigning is probably a bad choice given how certain I am that we’d win it next season but I really wasn’t motivated for another season in China just now. (staying the season would have likely helped in reputation too but oh well.

Experimentation

Because I resigned before the end of the season I’ll cover the Asian cup in next seasons update so with that there is not a lot to say on Qatar this season, only played friendlies though I did try out a vast array of tactics that I wouldn’t usually try to, not just for potential for the Qatar team but to see how they performed for potential use for teams going forward, though none really stuck.

Second Leg Stats

Next Season

I’m not really sure, I’ll have a look round for jobs and see where looks like they’d be a good option, though I’d not be entirely surprised if I don’t have a job till after the Asian Cup. Qatar will take the focus for now.

The story so far

Overall Progress

[XuluBak]

AC MIlan

2033-34 End-of-Season Review

My first season at Milan is in the books. We didn't lift any trophies, but I'd still consider it extremely successful, all things considered. It almost didn't happen though. When I took over, the club was on the brink of financial disaster, so some drastic measures were needed, but the board weren't exactly cooperative. Most notably blocking my first attempt to unload Donnarumma's horribly bloated contract (€350k/week) over a measly €1M in transfer fee. Fortunately, I was able to find a second buyer, but their obstructionism costed us millions in covered wages. All said, our outgoing transfers were nearly triple that of our incoming transfers, and we got through the season with a tiny squad (16 players ended up with significant minutes) and virtually nonexistent academy. We went from €65M in the red to over €100M in the black in under a year...

We started the season using a 442 diamond, but ultimately ended up using a 4312 most of the year. After a predictably bumpy start, we won six straight heading into the Derby della Madonnina. It didn't go well. Easily our worst performance of the season, and frankly, we were lucky to lose 3-0. Our performances as a whole could best be described as "all over the place." Just as we'd find a run of good form, often dominating a game or two I'd expected to be a struggle, we'd have a complete no-show performance. Our aim was Europa League, and that looked about right for the first half of the season, but a good run combined with some other sides dropping off opened a pathway for bigger things. Obviously, UCL qualification would be a huge boost, but I was, absurdly, a bit torn. We're nowhere near ready to compete at that level, but it'd be a huge boost. The second half of the season went much the same as the first. Better at our best, but still may as well have not bothered showing up at times. I was so focused on the race for fourth that I didn't even realize until after the final kick of the ball on matchday 38, by beating Napoli we'd jumped them into third on head-to-head results. 

Looking ahead

We're ahead of schedule, exceeding not only the board's expectations, but my own, and our biggest acquisition of the summer (Brazilian LCB) didn't even kick a ball for us in the 2033-34 season (non-EU limits). I've also added some quality depth/fringe starters through free transfers, but they'll just be replacing loanees. That doesn't help us close the gap on Inter though. Nor does our current financial limitations. We currently have 35M available, with 40% retention. Hoping they open things up a bit once we're into the new league year, but in the meantime, switching my focus to the 2034 World Cup. England should be among the favorites, and we've toughed up the midfield after the debacle against France in the NL final. Qualifying was a breeze, but would have been highly concerned if it wasn't. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by XuluBak

[treva]

The 25/26 season was largely frustrating, although there were lots of positives to take heading into next season. First thing's first, after leaving PSS to venture away from Indonesia for the first time, I had to wait several months before landing a new job. I had been considered for a couple of jobs but rejected, including the job I would eventually take after the guy they hired was sacked after just 36 days. That job was manager of Melbourne City in the Australian A-League.

 

 

Linked to the Man City Football Group, Melbourne City is an excellent club to manage. They had slipped from title challengers to a bottom half club in the 24/25 season and they were keen to get back to where they belong, as well as compete in the AFC Champions League. Finances are obviously no issue but the crazy salary cap rules in place for the A-League make it difficult to make wholesale changes. My plan was to make a couple of signings but to largely leave the squad intact for one season before changing things once a few contracts run down. A brief overview of the transfer rules: 5 foreign players, there's a salary cap, 2 designated players can be assigned outside of that salary cap, youth players don't count towards the salary cap, you can sign a 'guest' player and transfers between A-League clubs can only be done as player trades. I completely revamped the backroom staff - the issue is the scouts are aiming a bit too high with their targets as we can't attract most of their shortlist because they want wages way above our capabilities. Our main signing pre-season was to bring in Jay Stansfield as a designated player from West Brom on a free.

 

We'll start with the FFA Cup. The first three rounds were all completed within pre-season and we managed to transfer our form against weak Aussie teams in friendlies to those in the A-League. We made it to the final, where we lost 4-1 to Brisbane Roar despite dominating the game, but along the way we beat rivals Melbourne Victory with two goals in added time, probably the best victory of the season.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the A-League is one odd place. Because of the salary cap every team is pretty closely matched and there are not many goals scored at all. We lost our opening two matches but then went on a 15 match unbeaten run. The issue was that we were racking up draws left, right and centre. We ended the season with two 0-0 draws that saw us miss out on a bye in the Finals, although a third place finish granted us a home tie against 6th placed Perth Glory. Across the regular season we had the best defence, conceding just 13 times in 26 games. However, goal scoring was a major issue and we only averaged a goal a game. Jamie Maclaren somehow earned top scorer with 14 goals, showing just how weak we were in front of goal from our other attacking positions. Our chance creation cost us as we conceded a header from a free kick early against Perth Glory and despite dominating possession barely made a chance to see us knocked out at the Elimination stage of the Finals.

 

 

A disappointing end to a very odd and frustrating season. However, there's lost to build upon and I can't see us doing this badly next year. I'm not sure how the AFC Champions League qualification works but as Adelaide United won the regular season and the Grand Final, as well as Brisbane Roar finishing second and losing the final (and winning the cup), I'm hoping there's three places and we'll get the third spot. We won't know until the new season starts due to the AFC Champions League kicking off midway through the Australian season.

 

On the international front we managed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup as one of the best second placed teams. Turkey proved to be our bogey side again, beating us for the third and fourth time since I took over in qualification to top the group, as well as in a pre-World Cup friendly that I arranged to try and end the run of losses against them. We beat Azerbaijan 13-0 along the way (see screenshot above) who had four men sent off. Drawing Congo and South Korea in the new format of the World Cup I was quietly confident we could top the group. We beat Congo just 1-0 and then threw away a 1-0 lead against South Korea to finish second and draw Germany in the second round. They smashed us. That was all she wrote, I decided to resign following the conclusion of the tournament and look elsewhere to earn my first international trophy.

 

 

 

Challenge Progress

Club

1/10 Top Domestic Leagues: Indonesian Liga 1 (x2)

1/10 Domestic Cups: Piala Indonesia (x2)

0/5 Club Continental Championships:

0/1 Club World Championship:

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments:

0/1 World Tournaments:

Edited May 29, 2020 by treva

[_JHTB_]

Season 8.5: Almost

I got back into a job much quicker than I originally anticipated landing in Brazil with relegation threatened Fluminense in what is I think the first ever time I’ve managed in Brazil on Football Manager.

Almost

Straight into the deep end we played a game on the day I was hired and we won 3-1 against 5^th, I think this was entirely new manage bounce as we lost the next three as I tried to get a feel for the team. With this new team it was quickly obvious that this is likely to be tougher task then I found at my last two clubs if not all clubs I’ve been at thus far and a new formation would be needed to get the most out our players. In spite of some slightly improved performances we were still liable to conceding to few chances resulting in us losing a lot of our games this led us to the final day of the season where we were level on points with the team in the relegation zone but ahead on wins (the primary league sorter). We had to better their result and we were against top of the table, mid game we dropped into the relegation zone as they went ahead but they were swiftly pegged back before we took a lead in our game before grabbing a second to ensure survival. This almost became my first relegation of the challenge but we decided to have another random win to save us. I feel sorry for Ceara who were the team directly below us as they went on a run of 6 wins from 7 games to end the season.

The run in

Next Season

This off season the priority for this team is to strengthen at full back it is the area which we have no real quality nor depth to the squad and I’ll probably try and offload some players I don’t see fitting into the squad. I am wary of the number of games there are in Brazil so I’ll still need to have a fairly large squad.

The Asian Cup was supposed to be in this seasonal update but as it will overlap with the start of next season in Brazil I’ll cover it later.

The story so far

Overall Progress

Edited May 29, 2020 by _JHTB_

[XuluBak]

England 

2034 World Cup

Having already lifted the World Cup with the Netherlands my only real aim was to do well enough to keep my job for Euros two years down the line. We landed group O with Mali and Panama. That, along with our second round draw against Australia, went as expected. The third round is when things started to get interesting...

Imagine the outcry.

[jamespthomas]

 

Chapter 1 - 2019-22

Season 1

Being a Welshman - I thought i'd start the challenge nearer home and took the only available job in the Welsh Premier at Cefn Druids, the oldest club in Wales. My intention was to win the welsh premier and cup in my second season whilst picking up coaching badges to get a top job in China or South Africa.I have managed in FM20 before in Wales at Newtown so I was confident of being able to sign the right free transfers to make a mockery of the season preview odds of 1000-1 but still overcoming TNS who are by far the best team in Wales was a huge first season challenge.

Managed to get a solid team on frees and loan transfers. Started the season well but got a bit of a hiding against TNS in our first game against them. but then managed to overcome them in the cup. The second half of the season was just non stop winning as the team really settled. We ended up winning the treble which was much better than expected. Juanito Lopez was sensational upfront. My best X1 from the season is below (backdated but still their best XI) I managed to get my coaching badges up to National A License and Reputation up to 1.25 stars whilst at the club.

Given that I had completed a domestic league and cup win in wales. I felt I needed to resign after the season in may and try for a job in Asia or South Africa mid season. I managed to get offered jobs in August in the Chinese Super League. with some 2.5 star clubs which was a surprise. Chongqing, Henan, Everbright. offered me jobs but I held out for another Chinese Super League Club......

Season 2

Tianjin offered me the job in August with only 7 games remaining, languishing in 12th so no chance of Asian Champions League the next season however with  a large transfer and wage budget of £45m and 275k wages which was a huge step up from Cefn Druids. I got off to to a great start winning first game 5-1 but we dropped off. The chinese national players we had werent up to it but we We had some quality foreign players in Sandro Wagner , Andres Cubas, Justen Glad, Acheampong but I felt I could upgrade them with the bigger transfer kitty.

Season 3

The first full season with Tianjin, I overhauled the squad significantly. I made the decision to split the transfer fees and tax over the next two seasons to make sure I could get the best  foreign player in season 1 that would improve the team straight away and then next season I would use my transfer budget on chinese national player upgrades. Whilst Wagner, Cubas etc were all good players... I decided to  upgrade and an amazing player for the spine of the team. CB (Lyanco) CM (Gravenberch) AM/W (Magno) ST (Esposito)  Sergio Gomez also joined for a pittance and rotated to suit injuries/resting.

The signings were all top players within the league which meant our season preview was 4th but we surpassed it and ended up winning the domestic double.  Esposito was a machine in front of goal and scored 43 goals in 30 games for Tianjin (average rating 7.96!). Gravenberch, Magno, Lyanco,Gomez were also fantastic. Key to our success though given how rare good chinese goalkeepers are was was a regen goalkeeper in the youth team. Lin Shuang who is now a good super league player aged 19.I was confident going into the next season that we would have a good chance to win the ASL given how well we had done if we could keep our best foreign players (all admiring glances from top european clubs and had release clauses of 40-55m) but we still needed to upgrade our domestic contingent if we could

Season 4

I spent the transfer window adding the best available domestic players overspending on a couple of youngsters who i felt could fill out the squad. We had a phenomenal season and ended up winning the quadruple beating a host of Chinese Super league sides in all the competitions, largely on the back of the goals of Esposito who whilst only scoring 17 in the league managed to score 17 in 12 in the Asian Champions League. In the ASL final we were 3-1 up in the first leg to Paxtakor and then survived a 1-0 loss in the second leg to secure the first continental title of my career. 

I am now in December 2022 and have recently been appointed the Nigeria coach following the 2022 World Cup with the Africa Cup of Nations coming up next year which I am looking forward to as Nigeria have some great players in Chukwueze and Ndidi. 

I am going to look for Jobs in south africa next ideally but would take the right job in the Americas.

Club
Season	Team		Division		Position	Best Player		        Notes										
19/20	Cefn Druids	Welsh Premier 	        1st		Juanito Lopez                   Manager of the Year, Won domestic Cup and League
20/21	Tianjin TEDA	Chinese Super League	12th		Andres Cubas                    finished off season, started in 12th with 7 games to go.
22/23	Tianjin TEDA    Chinese Super League	1st		Sebastian Esposito 	        Manager of the Year, Won domestic Cup and League
22/23   Tianjin TEDA    Chinese Super League    1st             Sebastian Esposito              Manager of the Year, Won quadruple including Asian Champions League 

International
Year		Team				Achievements
22 -            Nigeria                         just appointed


Challenge Progress 5/32

Club
 2/10 top domestic leagues 		Wales, China(2)			
 2/10 domestic cups 			Wales, China(2)
						
 1/5 club continental championships	 	
 0/1 club world championship

International
 0/5 continental tournaments 		
 0/2 world tournaments

Edited May 31, 2020 by jamespthomas
mistake

[_JHTB_]

Fluminense and Qatar (and Romania): 2027 Season

Inconclusive, Inconsistent, Bogey Team, 27 Hours and Outclassed

We had a pretty busy off season as we looked to close some of the gaps in that the side had as well as replacing players who had their release fees activated whilst preparing for the Asian Cup with Qatar.

Inconclusive

For the state championships I was aware that we’d be facing off against teams that we should be beating so I set about trying to develop a tactic that would work for this side going into the actual league system. What I settled on didn’t do awfully, we won both the first and second stages of the competition with me thinking that would win us the whole thing, but no, we had to play a final game against fellow top flight opposition which we lost 3-0. The final was actually sandwiched between two cup games which we also lost which meant it was hard to determine how well the tactic actually worked for us.

Inconsistent

The start to our Serie A campaign was pretty good, 3 wins and 2 draws from our first 5 games and looked good value for our top 6 position in the league and then we got smashed 5-1. It wasn’t a weird smash and grab we were just well beaten. We did bounce back straight after but then June saw us pick up just two points, the games we were losing in June we weren’t really playing particularly badly we just seemed to make glaring mistakes every game and concede as a result of that. After a winless June I decided that the verdict was out on my new tactic – that it wasn’t quite good enough (or rather our players were perhaps not good enough to use it as we seemed to play some lovely stuff at times just dwelled on the ball or passed to the opposition at others). The first try at tweaking saw us lose 2-1 though we were unlucky not to come away with a win before we started winning games again winning 6 in a row and 5 of those without conceding to put us on strong footing for the rest of the season.

Bogey team

Our form continued to be pretty good for most part, generally positive results and usually without conceding many, a few losses but not heavy losses and usually fairly tight games and the obligitary loss against Corbitiba who are somewhat of a bogey side for us 4 games we’ve face them this season and have not managed to score a single goal against them. Granted some of those games they were good value for their win but to not score a goal in 360 minutes against them is crazy. The main issue is that it seemed to send us spiralling back into just gifting the opposition the ball for goalscoring opportunities which of course translates to conceding more goals and winning less games.

27 Hours

The seasonal run in was a fairly close run event with 6 games left we were in with a shot at qualifying for the Copa Libertadores though more likely through the qualifying stages then straight into the group stages and if that didn’t happen we were all but guaranteed a spot in the Copa Sudamericana so continental football at least which is an improvement from staying up on the last day last term. That said so many teams in Brazil get continental qualification. Importantly we were just coming into form winning the first two of the six games before we were held to a goalless draw to a tough Corinthians side. After the game I did get through a couple of messages telling me one striker had gone 18 hours without scoring and another had gone 9 hours which not fantastic as far as goalscoring form goes. Thankfully they both managed to break that streak in the next game against the team bottom of the league. A win in the penultimate game saw us secure our spot in the Copa Libertadores and meant that we just needed to win on the last game of the season for our spot to be an automatic group place. We lost, another game where we played well until the final 3^rd, we played the day before everyone else so had to wait a day to find out our fate and it was the worst that could have been as we dropped down to 6^th. However, 6^th place is actually Fluminense’s best finish since 2014 where they also recorded a 6^th place finish.

Outclassed

Finally got round to playing the Asian Cup with Qatar, to start the group we put in a poor performance but scraped a 1-0 win against a Bahrain side far below us in the rankings before comfortably beating the opposition that was closest to our own ranking in Thailand a nice 2-0 win before another poor performance against the lowest rank team a 1-1 against Tajikistan but that was enough to see us top our group. The second round saw yet another subpar performance as it took us penalties to get the better of Philippines. A 2-0 against Lebanon was straight forward but we then got the worst semi-final draw we could have with us facing Japan. It was not a close game, they opened the scoring early and never looked like losing and were 3-0 up at half time. I did try and change things and we got a goal back but they immediately went up the other end and scored. A sending off for us and a late penalty for them saw them run out 5-1 victors and that was probably a fair enough reflection of the game. The entire tournament we didn’t seem to play very well so I’m surprised we got as far as we did, another tournament on the ‘almost did it’ pile.

In the back end of the year I did get offered a new international job which I decided to take as I try and take Romania to the European Championship. The job offer came a week after the last international fixtures of the year so no games to talk about.

Final League Standings

Asian Cup Knockout Tree

Next Season

The goal for next season is to continue building on our strong season this time out, the main areas I think are in need of refreshing is up front as covered our strikers were far from prolific (I also need to look into tweaking the formation which is obviously a little bit of a factor), and again in defence. Whilst I did improve the defence last season the quality there is the lowest in relation to the rest of the team. Whilst we are in the Copa Libertadores, I don’t expect us to challenge for it next season, however, Cruzeiro won it this season and got relegated from our league so it’s not beyond all possibilities.

Romania have a playoff game against Northern Ireland early in 2028 to try and secure a spot in the European Championship

The story so far

Overall Progress

[treva]

 

With no international job it was time to focus on Melbourne City and improving on last season's short comings. Unfortunately not a lot went to plan. We strengthened where we could and allowed a few young players to come through into the first team but on a whole we didn't prove to be that much better than last season. We were knocked out of the FFA Cup by Central Coast Mariners in the Quarter Final and whilst we weren't that bad in the league we found ourselves fighting for a spot in the Finals. I also had to face the pressure from the board who were getting anxious and for a period I was in must win territory after five losses back-to-back in the AFC Champions League and A-League. We pulled through at the right time, though, and a win on the last day of the season guaranteed us a Finals spot, even finishing 4th in the end to grab a home tie. We beat Brisbane Roar comfortably before saving our best performance of the season for league leaders and reigning champs Adelaide United when we thrashed them 3-0 away from home. This meant we would play rivals Melbourne Victory in the Grand Final. Sadly the dream end to a rollercoaster of a season was not to be as we lost 2-1.

 

 

In the Champions League it was a similar story. After beating FC Tokyo in a playoff, we faced being dumped out in the Group Stage after losing to Beijing and Daegu. We hung in there and won our last three matches in the group to make it through to the knockout rounds. We faced a familiar foe in Brisbane Roar and sadly were dumped out 3-2 on aggregate despite winning the away leg 2-1 (a very dubious disallowed goal cost us a place in the quarter finals).

 

We have to be better next season and the first priority will be to find an out-and-out goalscorer, something we have lacked during the last two years. If we don't win a trophy next season this stint in Australia could prove very costly for the rest of my career.

 

 

 

Challenge Progress

Club

1/10 Top Domestic Leagues: Indonesian Liga 1 (x2)

1/10 Domestic Cups: Piala Indonesia (x2)

0/5 Club Continental Championships:

0/1 Club World Championship:

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments:

0/1 World Tournaments:

Edited June 1, 2020 by treva

[Britrock]

Saudi Arabia - 2038 World Cup Review

No spoilers as it's obvious I'm not going to win with Saudi Arabia!

We got drawn into a group with Portugal (who won the 2022, 2030 and 2034 WCs) and Guinea-Bissau. We beat Guinea-Bissau fairly easily 2-0 before losing 2-0 to Portugal. Portugal went on to hammer Guinea-Bissau 14-0 (!!!) so we went through to the second round in second place

In the second round we drew Poland, who won their group with Mexico and Thailand. We outplayed them all game but couldn't score and so we went to penalties after a 0-0 draw. We won 4-2 as our keeper made two great saves

That put us through to the 3rd round where we ran into Argentina. We played well but ultimately their quality proved too important and we went out 3-1.

The rest of the tournament saw Portugal go on to claim their 4th WC victory in the last 5. I'm not quite sure how Portugal have ended up so dominant in my game world, I do have Liga NOS loaded, but for no longer than the big 5 leagues and south america has been loaded since the start.

Now I just have to wait another 6 months until the Asian Cup, the whole reason for taking the Saudi job in the first place!

Edited June 2, 2020 by Britrock

[XuluBak]

On 29/05/2020 at 04:59, treva said:

That's a lot of draws! Does 3rd place qualify you for AFC CL or is placement based on how you fare in playoffs? (I know virtually nothing about A-League, although, it sounds similar to MLS...aside from the lack of goals...MLS teams can't defend)

 

[treva]

7 hours ago, XuluBak said:

That's a lot of draws! Does 3rd place qualify you for AFC CL or is placement based on how you fare in playoffs? (I know virtually nothing about A-League, although, it sounds similar to MLS...aside from the lack of goals...MLS teams can't defend)

 

I think it completely depends on who wins the Grand Final. As far as I understand it there are three places available, the top two in the table and then the winner of the Grand Final. If the Grand Final winner finished in the top two it then moves to the loser of the Grand Final and if they are also in the top two it moves to 3rd in the regular season table.

 

For example, in the next season I finished 4th and lost the Grand Final but because Melbourne Victory finished 6th and won the Grand Final I won't get a Champions League spot. It's also difficult because Champions League runs from January to November whilst the A-League runs October to May, so you don't actually find out until the latter part of the season.

 

It's a really tough country for this challenge because you're effectively riding on two knockout competitions to earn your two trophies. I've now lost two finals in two seasons, so it's make or break this year.

[XuluBak]

6 hours ago, treva said:

I think it completely depends on who wins the Grand Final. As far as I understand it there are three places available, the top two in the table and then the winner of the Grand Final. If the Grand Final winner finished in the top two it then moves to the loser of the Grand Final and if they are also in the top two it moves to 3rd in the regular season table.

 

For example, in the next season I finished 4th and lost the Grand Final but because Melbourne Victory finished 6th and won the Grand Final I won't get a Champions League spot. It's also difficult because Champions League runs from January to November whilst the A-League runs October to May, so you don't actually find out until the latter part of the season.

 

It's a really tough country for this challenge because you're effectively riding on two knockout competitions to earn your two trophies. I've now lost two finals in two seasons, so it's make or break this year.

Gotcha. Didn't even think about A-League and AFC CL being on staggered schedules like that. I think that can be a huge advantage, but you're so limited financially, and in terms of player registration, it seems like a pretty steep hill to overcome. Al-Hilal and CSL clubs dominate the competition in my save, although, Sydney FC has managed to win it once and finish runner up twice in my save. 

Fair point with both trophies being knockout oriented. That's your only option in North America, although, Mexico gives you two cracks at the league each calendar year. 

[treva]

2 hours ago, XuluBak said:

Gotcha. Didn't even think about A-League and AFC CL being on staggered schedules like that. I think that can be a huge advantage, but you're so limited financially, and in terms of player registration, it seems like a pretty steep hill to overcome. Al-Hilal and CSL clubs dominate the competition in my save, although, Sydney FC has managed to win it once and finish runner up twice in my save. 

Fair point with both trophies being knockout oriented. That's your only option in North America, although, Mexico gives you two cracks at the league each calendar year. 

It's an advantage once you get through the group stages. Unfortunately the final few group matches are bang at the business end of the season. Sydney FC have made the final in my save too, but you're right, if you can get a CSL club your chances of winning increase dramatically.

To think you could potentially cross off two leagues in the space of a year, if you got extremely lucky, going from Mexico to one of the South American countries makes me envious heading into my 3rd A-League Season.

[Britrock]

I've had some crazy games in this adventure but this one may top them all. 3-0 down on aggregate, with 2 of them as away goals, needing 4 goals to win and only 30 minutes left while playing my fiercest rival in the quarter final of the Copa Libertadores and then this happened! I was absolutely bricking it for the last 3 mins + 5 mins stoppage time!

[vikeologist]

I've discovered a (possible) workaround to the bug of players not being fit for the Club World Championship because they've all gone on holiday.

I'm posting it here, rather than on the Youth Challenge I discovered it on) because you need the CWC for this challenge. Imagine how annoying it's going to be if I win it on the Youth Challenge where I don't need it).

I'm not posting it in spoilers because I don't think it's any kind of cheat. It's just a way to counteract the bug.

You can't arrange any fixtures for your first team, but you may be able to arrange a match for your U20 (or equivalent) team...

Against your first team!

This might only work in Italy, because of the competition schedule for U20s, but if anybody comes up against this bug, we could at least get them to try it.

[treva]

Quick update: Two and a bit years of my career, wasted. Things had looked rosey heading through pre-season and at 2-0 up vs Perth Glory in the FFA Cup Quarter Final I was very confident of winning a trophy this season. We then let the lead slip in the second half and lost on penalties. Following that we lost 5 and drew 2 of our first 7 games in the A-League, including throwing away leads against Sydney FC twice (one game we were 3-0 and 4-1 up and still drew 4-4). For some unknown reason we had just turned to **** overnight, especially at the back where we were shipping goals like we never had before. So it was time to resign before I was pushed. A rather disgraceful end to an extremely frustrating tenure that saw us lose two finals that could have seen me on four trophies rather than just the two by now.

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards as they say. Looking at the available jobs there were plenty that stood out that I had no hope with but there were two that I got interviews for and I ultimately got offered the job at both of them. Brentford, 11th in the Championship, or Chinese Super League team DL Pro. Brentford would have been an excellent job because of their great finances and the fact they were just 3 points from the playoffs with a real opportunity to make it into the Prem, which would have been good for reputation. However, I need trophies and I can't ignore the Chinese Super League. With a 176mil transfer budget and a 3.6mil wage budget, DL Pro it is! This feels like make or break for this challenge now...

 

[_JHTB_]

Fluminense and Romania: 2028 Season

Goals, Three Horse Race, Hectic and Debut Finalists

The offseason was spent trying to find a new striker but ended up me adding depth in other areas and strengthening at centre back.

Goals

As stated above, I was unable to find a suitable striker in the offseason but any disappointment at not being able to find a striker was quickly forgotten as the player considered our best striker but scored just 10 in 49 appearances last season found his shooting boots. It took him just 6 games to surpass his total from last season and by the time the Serie A season started he was closing in on 40 goals in all competitions. We only lost 3 games in the state Championship but those losses meant a 3^rd place finish for us. The Copa Libertadores qualifying and eventually group stage were fairly straight forward as well though we did lose to Flamengo in our group. Before the summer break we did have a pretty solid start to the season though there were a couple of disappointing draws that we should have won, but a lot of our early games were against teams expected to be challenging towards the top end of the table. There was a slight worry as well that our striker who was prolific before hand hadn’t scored since his return from injury.

Three Horse Race

After the break for international tournaments we came back a little sluggishly, we were knocked out of the cup with two pretty awful performances whilst scraping through the Copa Libertadores on penalties after a 0-0 aggregate score. The factor, our prolific striker still not finding the net after his injury, in fact it went up to 11 hours of not scoring before he managed to find his scoring boots again. We did plug away though and the campaign did look to be gearing towards a successful campaign though Internacional were looking pretty unbeatable in first, us and Vitoria were pushing them all the way. We also found ourselves progressing in the Copa Libertadores with a 5-1 aggregate win over Sao Paulo. The semi-final did drawing us against none other than the aforementioned Internacional.

We drew the home leg 0-0 before we had a long stretch of 8 league games before the second leg. By the time the second leg came around we’d both hit a patch of sticky form in the league so neither team particularly had the best momentum. They took an early lead in a game that we were comfortably on top but we couldn’t seem to find a breakthrough hitting the woodwork 3 times (though I think the match engine didn’t count some others) before we won a penalty in second half injury time which we converted to progress to the final on away goals far from a convincing performance but a win is a win. The final promising to be a heated clash as we were to face fierce rivals Flamengo in the final. At this point in the season we found ourselves only 3 points off top spot in the league and in the Copa Libertadores final so the possibility of an unlikely double on the horizon.

Hectic

The season already seemed to have been going forever (I guess fairly common feeling in Brazil) but we had 11 games in just over a month to look forward to which would determine if I had to stay for another mammoth season next time round – a Copa Libertadores win and we’d leave even if we didn’t win the league, the other way round we’d probably have to stay. Our form leading up to the final was not great, one goal in 4 matches and generally poor performances, though that was contributed to by international call ups and an injury to our best striker. This did mean the league was out of our own hands at this point so if we lost the final there was a good chance we didn’t win anything this season which would be bitterly disappointing.

Going into the final having not beaten Flamengo in our previous 7 attempts was a little bit of a worry but two early goals for us settled the nerves. They did peg us back early in the second half to add a bit more intensity to the final but 10 minutes later we extended our lead then later into the game we missed a penalty before adding ourselves a 4^th goal late into injury time to tick the first Continental Trophy off the list, the final did seem a little anticlimactic as it was much more straight forward than I anticipated (we’d drawn 0-0 to them just 3 days earlier).

Focus did immediately return to the league where we were 7 points behind Internacional with a game in hand so would need some favours were we to complete a double. We won our game in hand but lost our next game which all but took the league away from us, though Internacional drawing in the penultimate game meant that we needed to win and them to lose and we’d win the league on goal difference.  We won our game but they won theirs so we ended up finishing second, still a good league campaign.

Our Striker, Flavinho ended up with 58 goals in all competitions, and whilst they certainly helped us it was our right winger Ahumada that was our best player 21 goals and 38 assists in all competitions phenomenal – no wonder we had to reject bids from Liverpool and Barcelona for him.

Debut Finalists

I had initially thought we were only one win from qualifying for the Euros but actually were requiring two wins first beating Northern Ireland 2-0 before an extra time victory over Denmark to qualify us. We drew Spain, Poland and Russia in our group. We should have secured our place in the second round in the second game but threw away a 2-goal lead in second half injury time. Thankfully, we progressed still in spite of losing our last group game to Spain (though I because of best placed 3^rd place teams we probably did actually secure qualification with our second game).

The second round was a little favourable to us as we drew Scotland who we beat 3-1 to keep the run alive but a tough quarter final tie against Portugal did await us where I expected us to bow out. Miraculously we prevailed winning 1-0 despite being reduced to 10 men late doors. We were drawn against Sweden so whatever the outcome, there would be a debut finalist. For the first half against Sweden we looked like we were going to breeze through to the final with the half time score of 1-0 being perhaps flattering on them, unfortunately, the second half was not as good, they scored twice to no response (though we did have an equaliser questionably ruled out for offside) to see them in the Euro Championship Final for the first time, a disappointing end to what was a really good tournament on the whole.   

As we’ve very little chance of winning the World Cup should we qualify I resigned and am probably going to hold out for an international team that has better chances of winning tournaments for our next foray into international management.

Flavinho

Gabriel Ahumuda

European Championship Tree

Next Season

My improved reputation courtesy of the Copa Libertadores win will surely grant me a plethora of options of clubs to take my next step at and whilst I don’t need to rush into a job, I am job hunting at a fairly common sacking period so we’ll see. I think for the most part I want to join a team that doesn’t have 73 games in a season.

As mentioned I’m unlikely to take any international job unless the team has a legitimate chance at their continental international competition.

The story so far

Overall Progress

[treva]

Quick question @_JHTB_ - when you were in China did you find it difficult to 'overspend' for players? My board seem to insist we don't spend more than their valuation for a player and it's stopping me from signing the quality Chinese players I need to build a strong team.

[_JHTB_]

52 minutes ago, treva said:

Quick question @_JHTB_ - when you were in China did you find it difficult to 'overspend' for players? My board seem to insist we don't spend more than their valuation for a player and it's stopping me from signing the quality Chinese players I need to build a strong team.

No, my board didn't place any restrictions on my transfers, it's a bit unfortunate if your board is limiting what you can buy especially with them giving you a decent sized budget. It may be worth having a look to see if there are any Chinese players outside of China that will join, but other than that, I guess its a case of hoping your board will let you spend the money they offered you to spend 

[treva]

3 hours ago, _JHTB_ said:

No, my board didn't place any restrictions on my transfers, it's a bit unfortunate if your board is limiting what you can buy especially with them giving you a decent sized budget. It may be worth having a look to see if there are any Chinese players outside of China that will join, but other than that, I guess its a case of hoping your board will let you spend the money they offered you to spend 

Thankfully started to get a few deals through - although what makes them think a player isn’t worth a certain amount makes no sense to me considering a couple they let me get away with.

Also, how inflated are the prices for the Chinese players?! 👀 Crazy money when you consider their ability against some of the foreign players who cost a lot less! Suppose it’s not that different than in England really...

Edited June 5, 2020 by treva

[_JHTB_]

13 hours ago, treva said:

Thankfully started to get a few deals through - although what makes them think a player isn’t worth a certain amount makes no sense to me considering a couple they let me get away with.

Also, how inflated are the prices for the Chinese players?! 👀 Crazy money when you consider their ability against some of the foreign players who cost a lot less! Suppose it’s not that different than in England really...

Think it's a product of there being so much money floating around and there not being a lot of Chinese players that have a decent level of quality so any that are get hit with heavy price tags especially when your forced to need them because of squad registration. Speaking of inflated prices though I think this is the craziest I've seen.

[Britrock]

Santos FC - 2038 season review

I finally did it, I finally had a "perfect" season where I won everything that I entered!

We started with the Brazilian Supercup, where we comfortably took down Palmeiras 2-0

We then moved on to the Sao Paulo State Championship. We faced Sao Paulo in the final again but this year we were able to see them off, beating them 3-2 on aggregate

Next up was the Copa Perdigao do Brasil, which we didn't need as we won it last year, but we won anyway beating Fortaleza 5-2 in the final

Next was the one competition that actually mattered, the Copa Libertadores. We made it to the final where we faced Boca. We had a back and forth first half but we took over eventually and ran out 5-2 winners.

Finally was the league, which I don't actually need for the challenge (I've won 5 already with the big 5 Euro leagues left) but I won it anyway. It was fairly comfortable in the end, but until about 30 games we were running close with a fair few teams

So that completes Brazil and everything but Europe (and most of the international tournaments). 149 games in two years, absolutely mental and relentless. I even did all of this while making a profit on transfers of £131m this season. Here's to Europe!

Edited June 6, 2020 by Britrock

[XuluBak]

Wow. That's a lot of games. I think trying to poach the Copa Liberatadores might be the way to go. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by XuluBak

[Britrock]

16 hours ago, XuluBak said:

Wow. That's a lot of games. I think trying to poach the Copa Liberatadores might be the way to go. 

Yeah, its pretty relentless. It's essentially a game every Sat and Weds from Jan through November. Every cup game is 2 legs (incl. the final) just in case there weren't enough games already. To further hammer home just how mental it is, we finished the season and the players went on holiday and the next item in my inbox was how the players would be back for pre-season in 7 days!

I don't think Argentina is quite as busy as Brazil, so River or Boca might be an easier path!

Edited June 7, 2020 by Britrock

[_JHTB_]

Atalanta: 2028/2029 Season

Promise

I didn’t spend long at all out of a job as I had a few interviews before settling on Atalanta as my next stop returning to Italy at the start of the January window a month after leaving Fluminense. When I arrived at Atalanta they were in horrendous form, truly terrible. In their last 14 matches they’d picked up 5 draws and lost the rest but they had provided me with a decently sized transfer budget. We were just outside the relegation spots so the aim for the season was just to try and stabilise and push towards a mid-table finish to allow time to scout for the summer window, but in the mean time try and bring in some players to make finishing mid-table a simpler affair. Transfers were a slight issue as there wasn’t much time to go about scouting players but I was happy with the business we conducted managing to get players in all the areas I wanted as well as selling the players who had kicked up a fuss and were ruining dynamics.

Promise

In the league I had no idea what to expect, the media prediction told me that we weren’t as bad as the league table suggested but the form doesn’t lie. In the end I was pleasantly surprised as we put on strong winning form to fly our way up the table and away from the possibility of relegation. When I took over at the start of January we were 3 points from the relegation zone, by the end of February we were 15. Our form did actually continue to be strong and it wasn’t until we faced top of the table Inter that we lost our first league game of my tenure. We did bounce back and largely were successful in the league but the performance before I arrived meant we could only reach as high as 8^th. We were 5^th in the second half of the season table and I was manager for all but one of those games (one of the losses) so I think that looks promising for next season.

2^nd half of stage table

Next Season

Next season I’m looking for us to build upon the end of this season, I’m tentatively hoping that we will be able to qualify for the Champions League next season, but I think continental qualification of some sort (i.e Europa or Conference) is what we should be having as our minimum aim. There doesn’t need to be any sort of overhaul but there are still areas I’d like to improve to push the team on.

The story so far

Overall Progress

[_JHTB_]

16 hours ago, XuluBak said:

Wow. That's a lot of games. I think trying to poach the Copa Liberatadores might be the way to go. 

 

2 minutes ago, Britrock said:

Yeah, its pretty relentless. It's essentially a game every Sat and Weds from Jan through November. Every cup game is 2 legs (incl. the final) just in case there weren't enough games already. To further hammer home just how mental it is, we finished the season and the players went on holiday and the next item in my inbox was how the players would be back for pre-season in 7 days!

I don't think Argentina is quite as busy as Brazil, so River or Boca might be an easier path!

Even worse when it's a International Tournament summer as all those games are crammed into even less months

[vikeologist]

6 minutes ago, Britrock said:

Yeah, its pretty relentless. It's essentially a game every Sat and Weds from Jan through November. Every cup game is 2 legs (incl. the final) just in case there weren't enough games already. To further hammer home just how mental it is, we finished the season and the players went on holiday and the next item in my inbox was how the players would be back for pre-season in 7 days!

I don't think Argentina is quite as busy as Brazil, so River or Boca might be an easier path!

But Brazilian sides can sometimes be too dominant. I've never played a full season in Brazil for this challenge, always taken over mid season, the first time extremely late mid season, as in at the very end of the season. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by vikeologist

[Britrock]

3 minutes ago, _JHTB_ said:

 

Even worse when it's a International Tournament summer as all those games are crammed into even less months

Yep, I had that this season. At one point I had two weekends in a row where I had 3 games in 5 days thanks to the cup final. Luckily after my experience in South Africa I made a point of having two players for every position so I can rotate the entire team between games, I save the selections as well to make life even easier

[XuluBak]

AC MIlan

2034-35 End-of-Season Review

The cash infusion I'd hoped for entering the summer didn't happen. Our already tiny squad was losing three first-choice starters (RB, CB, DLF) and a heavily used rotational player (DLP/CB). Fortunately, after spending a year on loan at PSG, we could now bring the LCB we bought from Fluminense into the squad. That made 13 plus a couple emergency reserves. I wasn't thrilled with my #10, or any replacement options, so sold him with the intention of trying 4132, reducing our squad burdens slightly. We also sold our #2 GK, having already replaced him on a free transfer. That bumped our transfer budget from €35M to roughly €50M. We used that to bring in Ghersini (DLF from Inter), Hueglo (journeyman RCB/FB from Burnley) and Ruiz (DLP/Mez from Athletic Club).  The rest of the squad was filled out with bargain bin or free transfers. 

Lowered Expectations

We were getting results, largely because of a soft opening schedule, and a late penalty here, desperation changes there, etc., but it wasn't pretty. 4132 simply wasn't working. I don't think we finished a single match in that formation, and ended up switching back to 4312, permanently, about a month into the season. Our draw for the UCL group stages didn't do us any favors: Barca, Dortmund, Dinamo Zagreb. I penciled Barca, defending champs, in as group winners. I was hoping we could beat out Dortmund for the two seed, luck of the draw would give us a chance in the TIM Cup, and qualifying for UCL again next year would give me the budget necessary to make a real push for things in '35-36.

About the only silver lining early on was Ghersini hit the ground running, scoring seven in eight (almost half his tally for the season), keeping us afloat while everyone else was struggling to find the back of the net. Thanks Inter! 

A Spark

It seems every season, for better or worse, has a pivotal game. This season, it was UCL Matchday 2 against Dortmund. 50/50. We couldn't defend set pieces. They couldn't stop being careless with the ball. 3-3. 96th minute. Corner. Defended initially, but foolishly conceded a second corner instead of just booting it clear. Ghersini near post, flick on, Schmitz! He's no Portal, but he channeled him in that moment. He'd been dreadful, near unplayable for a month, but the alternatives weren't faring much better and we needed someone to get going in that Advanced Forward role, with him our best option on paper. A brace, including a 96th minute winner, seemed to do the trick. We'd win our next two Serie A matches 8-0, with four from Schmitz. Barca would provide an expected reality check, 3-0 inside 12 minutes at Camp Nou, but 1-1 in the reverse meant our trip to Dortmund didn't matter. We were through. And the board was extremely happy. That funded a new #10 (Shala) and RCB upgrade.

Schmitz was on fire and we'd only drop points to Inter, 0-0, away to close out the year. 7 points clear of Juve, 15 clear of Inter at the midway point. Inter got off to a dreadful start (10 draws and 1 loss), but made things interesting, briefly, with a ten match win streak, before it seemed to fall apart for them in the league as they made a UCL run. 

Juve has had an absolutely dreadful 2035. Sassuolo knocked them out in the first round of the TIM Cup, 2-0, in Turin. Then Burnley knocked them out of the UCLs 1-0, in Turin, after a 0-0 first leg. Then, to pour a little extra salt in their wounds, with no other competitions to worry about, they only managed two wins in the final two months of the season. Finishing 4th. 

That's all to say, we coasted, clinching the clubs first Scudetto in nearly 25 years. Schmitz won the golden boot with 25. Bastianelli, our wonderkid RB, won best young player of the season (Ferreira, our LB, won it last year). They also won best striker and defender of the season in Serie A, respectively.

25 Passes to Glory (TIM Cup)

Despite a favorable draw, we just about blew it. We needed penalties to get past Perugia and ET to get past Cagliari, both at home. Without Schmitz, I fully expected Roma to knock us out, especially after a 1-1 home leg, but we underwhelmingly managed to get by them too. Napoli was almost certainly the better side in regulation of the final, but a brilliant run, through two hard challenges, and a perfect cross by Ferreira got us into extra time. Then, it happened. A beautifully worked team goal. 25 passes, mostly one/two touch, building up to a perfectly paced slip through from Garreau (3rd striker, playing DLF) to Schmitz. Tidy finish. Shala would blast one through their keeper to put it away. 3-1 AET. 

Ridiculousness (UCL)

Bayern for the knockouts. I didn't expect to win, especially once Schmitz was ruled out for the home leg, and part of me hoped we wouldn’t. My record in UCL is absurd and it kinda diminishes the whole thing to win it. We were the better side but couldn’t find the back of the net until the 81st minute. They’d equalize a few minutes later. An early 5-man blitzkrieg counter flipped second leg on its head. A poorly defended free kick would give us a commanding 2-0 road lead. They'd pull one back on a penalty before Ferreira would find Schmitz with a ridiculous back post cross just before the break to crush their spirits. 

Somehow, we drew Burnley in the quarterfinals. They were a good enough side defensively that we couldn't steamroll them, but it never felt competitive. We won 3-1 on aggregate, with Schmitz scoring all three against his former side.

Man City. They may as well have not bothered showing up for the first leg. We dominated from the start. 3-0 inside 18 minutes, could have easily been more, added a fourth in the second half. They only managed one shot, not even on target. They put up a fight in the second leg, but way too much to ask. 4-2 aggregate. Inter knocked out defending champ Barca in the other semi. 

Inter. Bleh. That meant I had to win. Extremely boring. They were better for most of it, but only forced one big save. We barely forced any. Just as I was mentally preparing for ET, and about to pull him off, Bastianelli received a switch, played a quick one-two, and blasted into the far side netting. 1-0. Yay? 

Now what?

I don’t know. I’ve resigned. May take another break from this save, or just stay out of club management until after Euros '36. A quick England update to come shortly, one way or another…

Randomness

Portal has won player of the year in England the past two seasons, as Liverpool have kept their run going domestically, but neither have managed European success since my departure.

Tuks FC won their first CAF CL trophy and second league title. Their double was so nearly a quadruple, losing both the FA and league cups finals on penalties. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by XuluBak

[Britrock]

You have to hand it to Sao Paulo, this is the peak of optimistic thinking!

[XuluBak]

9 minutes ago, Britrock said:

You have to hand it to Sao Paulo, this is the peak of optimistic thinking!

Same thing happened after I resigned from Benfica (Porto?), Liverpool (Chelsea?), and Milan (Inter). 

[XuluBak]

New Job: 1. FC Magdeburg

I was leaning toward staying out of club football until after Euros, but an interesting and unique opportunity caught my attention. 1. FC Magdeburg, a once prominent side in East Germany, and the only one to lift European hardware, were just promoted to the Bundesliga for the first time in club history, after beating Freiburg in both legs of the playoff. My only real objective for the upcoming season and foreseeable future is survival. We're one of five teams with equal odds for relegation. Bayern are on a run of 12 straight Bundesliga titles and favored to make it 13.  

Mini England update: We largely outplayed Spain in the NL semis, but were undone by set pieces. 2-3. We'd pummel Portugal in the third place match, 3-0. Spain would beat France 2-1. Focus now shifts to Euro qualifying, with an absurdly weak group. Albania, 64th, are the next highest ranked team. 

 

Edited June 7, 2020 by XuluBak

[Britrock]

2039 AFC Asian Cup review

Finally, the whole reason for taking the Saudi Arabia job arrived. Could I pull through and win the Asian Cup for my second international tournament?

Group stage

Spoiler

We were drawn into a group with Qatar, Jordan and China. It was about as easy as you'd imagine. 3-0 vs Qatar and 4-1 vs Jordan meant we went into the final game against China already through. We beat them 1-0 to top the group with a perfect record

Second round (if applicable)

Spoiler

We drew Uzbekistan, who we dispatched easily with 3 first half goals

Quarter final (if applicable)

Spoiler

I expected to face Japan here, but UAE surprised them in the second round so we faced them instead. It was one hell of a stressful game. We went behind early but equalised almost immediately. There were no more goals so we went to ET. They gave away a penalty early which Soto converted, but Soto then gave away a penalty himself early in the second half of ET. I didn't want penalties so went all out for the win, which we managed to get with a stonking finish from the edge of the area after 166 mins to send us through to the semis.

Semi-final (if applicable)

Spoiler

We came up against China for the second time. A pretty boring 90 minutes ended 0-0 and we went to ET for the second game in a row. They scored early and my heart sank. I went all out attack and we equalised early in the second half and then somehow scored a winner 5 mins later so I could avoid penalties again and we scraped through to the final. Stressful doesn't begin to describe it. Football, bloody hell!

Final (if applicable)

Spoiler

I fully expected South Korea here, but they were knocked out early on by Iran which is who we would face. This wasn't stressful at all, an early goal put us ahead and we were never under any pressure whatsoever. A late first half penalty and another goal early in the second half meant we ran out comfortable 3-0 winners.

Review

Spoiler

My second international tournament is done, 13 years after my first. The stress of these tournaments is something else! There really isn't an easy game at this point, the knockout stages of AFCON and the Asian Cup were both stressful as hell. For my next steps I'm going to resign from Saudi Arabia and find a team in the big 5 leagues to manage.

 

[vikeologist]

4 minutes ago, Britrock said:

2039 AFC Asian Cup review

Finally, the whole reason for taking the Saudi Arabia job arrived. Could I pull through and win the Asian Cup for my second international tournament?

Group stage

  Reveal hidden contents

We were drawn into a group with Qatar, Jordan and China. It was about as easy as you'd imagine. 3-0 vs Qatar and 4-1 vs Jordan meant we went into the final game against China already through. We beat them 1-0 to top the group with a perfect record

Second round (if applicable)

  Reveal hidden contents

We drew Uzbekistan, who we dispatched easily with 3 first half goals

Quarter final (if applicable)

  Reveal hidden contents

I expected to face Japan here, but UAE surprised them in the second round so we faced them instead. It was one hell of a stressful game. We went behind early but equalised almost immediately. There were no more goals so we went to ET. They gave away a penalty early which Soto converted, but Soto then gave away a penalty himself early in the second half of ET. I didn't want penalties so went all out for the win, which we managed to get with a stonking finish from the edge of the area after 166 mins to send us through to the semis.

Semi-final (if applicable)

  Reveal hidden contents

We came up against China for the second time. A pretty boring 90 minutes ended 0-0 and we went to ET for the second game in a row. They scored early and my heart sank. I went all out attack and we equalised early in the second half and then somehow scored a winner 5 mins later so I could avoid penalties again and we scraped through to the final. Stressful doesn't begin to describe it. Football, bloody hell!

Final (if applicable)

  Reveal hidden contents

I fully expected South Korea here, but they were knocked out early on by Iran which is who we would face. This wasn't stressful at all, an early goal put us ahead and we were never under any pressure whatsoever. A late first half penalty and another goal early in the second half meant we ran out comfortable 3-0 winners.

Review

  Reveal hidden contents

My second international tournament is done, 13 years after my first. The stress of these tournaments is something else! There really isn't an easy game at this point, the knockout stages of AFCON and the Asian Cup were both stressful as hell. For my next steps I'm going to resign from Saudi Arabia and find a team in the big 5 leagues to manage.

 

I've just had a very similar experience to you in the Champions League, (different challenge), but at least then the matches were spread out. International tournaments are a nightmare of stress. In fact, I rarely get through a tournament in 1 day  (unless I'm knocked out early) as I need to take time outs.

[Britrock]

After waiting for 6 months for a single useful job to come available, the Milan job opened up as Eddie Howe (!!!) resigned after 6 years in charge which included 5 consecutive Serie A titles, 4 consecutive Italian Cups and 2 Champions League wins. Who knew Eddie Howe would be the pre-eminent manager in my FM universe?!

To be fair, some of these Milan players are absolutely unreal. The GK in particular boggles my mind, I've never seen a player that good.

Edited June 7, 2020 by Britrock

[XuluBak]

Howe has been bouncing around England, mostly at Championship clubs, in my save. 

That GK is fairly insane, although, above a certain level, I can't say that I can tell much difference between one GK and another. They also seem to develop ridiculously fast if they're getting regular first-team action in a top league. 

 

 

[XuluBak]

For amusement purposes only...

First transfer:

Our debut:

[treva]

Turns out that horrific start to season three in Melbourne was a blessing in disguise...

 

 

Having finished 10th the year before, the plan was to utilise the transfer budget to upgrade some of our foreign players but also the quality of our Chinese players. We obviously had to overpay for a few players but it was worth it to ensure we made the most of our allocations. I caused some uproar pushing out our foreign RB and AMC but replaced them with a Chilean international (Rojas AMC) and young Brazilian (Cilinho LB). I also used my previous knowledge of managing Hong Kong to sign their best player (Chan Chun Wai AMR), as you're allowed one extra 'foreign' player from a few of the Chinese-linked Asian nations. We splashed out on Chinese international Hueng Fei (MC, £55mil) and Guo Xiaolong to fill our gap at RB (£34.5mil). Perhaps the most important signing though was of a goalkeeper, Xu Xiaogang, who came on a free - as anyone who has managed in China will know, you're not allowed foreign goalkeepers so finding a good one that will join you is tough. He proved to be better than his initial CA seemed to suggest.

 

Things started well as we went unbeaten through our first seven, winning six, before we faced our first real test against the also unbeaten Shandong. They were rock solid at the back and beat us 1-0. That would be our only loss for eight league games, winning them all, as well as two FA Cup matches against Jia League opposition. Our quarter final away to Beijing was an utter joke. Our AML was sent off after 20 mins for a completely fair tackle and then they scored a screamer with minutes to go to knock us out. The red card was rescinded to anger me even further. We smashed them in the league 3-0 the next game to anger me further again. A loss to title challengers Chonqinq wobbled us a little as we went through a four-game patch with two losses and two draws, knocking us off top spot. We bounced back with two wins before yet again losing to Shandong 1-0. This was a potential issue with the h2h results the deciding factor should we end level on points. Thankfully we won our next seven, conceding just one goal along the way, and whilst Shandong did their best to stick with us they fell away late as we clinched the title with a game to spare. We lost the final game to fall short of the record wins in a single CSL season but we did land the most goals in a season with 69.

 

I failed to mention in there that just before our four-game blip Everton matched the buyout clause for the league's best player Rafael Pereira, despite my best attempts to offer him a new deal with a bigger buyout clause. He was averaging 8.00 in 13 league games so that was a huge loss. Luckily my DoF recommended a fellow Portuguese midfielder at Leeds to replace him named Diogo Abreu. He signed for the exact amount we sold Pereira for and whilst he wasn't quite as good went on to average 7.64 in 17 games, playing every single one of the remaining fixtures.

 

 

Hueng Fei, our £55million purchase at the start of the season, proved to be the best signing of all. He won 'best local player' in the CSL, best U23 player and every single one of our club awards.

 

 

Plan for next season is to strengthen our Chinese players and attempt to win the FA Cup and the AFC Champions League. With only three foreign players allowed to be registered we're going to have to leave out our striker and LB, although I'm confident we have plenty of goals in our midfield to get by.

 

 

Challenge Progress

Club

2/10 Top Domestic Leagues: Indonesian Liga 1 (x2), Chinese Super League

1/10 Domestic Cups: Piala Indonesia (x2)

0/5 Club Continental Championships:

0/1 Club World Championship:

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments:

0/1 World Tournaments:

Edited June 9, 2020 by treva

[Britrock]

After looking at it sitting vacant for a few months, I decided to apply for the Ireland job to keep my eye in on international management and they offered me the job without an interview. We're currently 4th in our Euro qualifier group after 3 games having played Norway twice already

[Britrock]

Managing in the top leagues is a different world. I've never seen someone have this issue before!

[_JHTB_]

Atalanta: 2029/2030

Dreamland and Three Penalties

We didn’t actually get that great of a transfer budget so a lot of the players I wanted to try and bring in we were unable to. We did manage to strengthen in some areas and some loans for other areas I was happy the squad was good enough to reach my target for the season. Even still, I almost left this summer, I had interviews for both Monaco and Real Madrid, both would be jobs I would have jumped at.

Dreamland

The league got off to a great start with 4 straight wins, though they were against teams I did expect us to be better than, and really I thought we’d win 5 on the bounce as we faced another beatable team at home; we lost 4-0 an inept performance. Following that we got back to winning ways and less a few draws that we probably should have converted to wins we had very strong form. That said, some of our performances were a little worrying regardless of picking up a result. We were actually top of the league in December, but another disappointing home loss saw us relinquish the summit to Juventus for Christmas. I don’t expect us to continue mounting a challenge for the league title this season as I don’t think the squad is good enough, but for us to be in touching distance approaching the halfway point is fantastic.

Three Penalties

January saw us bring nobody in as we didn’t have the transfer budget to do so but that didn’t really temper our form as we continued to apply pressure to Juventus in top spot. The odd thing is that I don’t even think that we were playing all that well we just managed to keep picking up results, not that I was complaining (well I was I wanted us to play well and win but hey-ho). We continued to push Juventus and when we played them with 3 games to go if they beat us they’d clinch the title. It was such a crazy and tense match, they missed a first half penalty before we were awarded a penalty in the 88^th minute which was saved but we managed to score from the resultant corner. The drama didn’t end there as there was time for a 3^rd penalty in the match in the 90+9 minute to Juventus which was saved and we claimed what was Atalanta’s first victory over Juventus in 22 tries to keep our title chances alive. The jubilation was short lived as we lost our next game whilst Juventus won to claim the league title. I’m not too disappointed though as our 2^nd place finish I feel is qualifies as a very successful season, I did not expect to be challenging for the league, that said by the rate at which we’re losing money I feel this was our best shot at the league.

The League Table

The Juventus Game

The Finances

Next Season

I don’t really know if I’m going to stay, the financial situation is an issue with us being granted a transfer budget of £484k we don’t really have the capability to strengthen to try and get the league win and our squad isn’t really good enough to challenge for the league especially as we’ll be likely to lose our loan players and the only real way to replace them is to sell key players. If I do stay I am hoping to challenge towards the top end of the league but feel one of the areas that gave us a boost this year was lack of continental games congesting our schedule so we’d have a harder time of it.

I may look to try and get an international job this summer as they’ll come available after the World Cup.

The story so far

Overall Progress